Last year, Gov. Bob Riley laid out an ambitious plan for expanding the state's renowned voluntary pre-K program to more than 20,000 of the state's 4-year-olds by 2011, but a sluggish economy is making it difficult to reach that goal.
Riley had proposed a three-year, $80-million plan that would have required the state Legislature to triple the pre-school budget at the beginning of the fiscal 2009 budget year, but the poor economy created a revenue shortfall that made such an expansion impossible.
The slowdown forced the governor to declare 12.5 percent proration in the Education Trust Fund.
He ultimately used half the money in the state's rainy day fund to reduce cuts to education to 9 percent.
State Department of Children's Affairs Commissioner Marquita Davis said First Class pre-K is funded from the Education Trust Fund so it took a hit when proration was declared. And unlike K-12 and colleges and universities, there was no stimulus money to make up some of the difference.
This year, the governor and
the state Legislature were able to cobble together a budget that raised pre-K funding from $17.4 million for fiscal 2009 to $19 million for fiscal 2010. But it's not nearly enough to put the state within reach of serving just over 15,000 students by the 2009-2010 school year.
"This year, for the third year in a row, the National Institute for Early Education Research ranked us No. 1 with North Carolina for the quality of our pre-K program," Davis said. "But we also, once again, ranked last for access because we barely serve 7 percent of children in this state."
Davis said her office still is committed to expanding access to the state's pre-K program, but without funding, it's tough to move at more aggressive pace.
With a governor's race on the horizon there's also some concern about what direction new leadership could take the state's pre-K program.
Davis said her goal is to make sure the program doesn't go backward, increasing the number of children it serves from 3,384 in fiscal 2008 to 3,870 currently.
Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, said Alabama isn't the only state that is seeing challenges to its pre-school programs because of the economy.
Barnett said the difference is that some states like Alaska, Rhode Island and Connecticut have found a way to forge ahead.
"I think it comes down to states making tough choices about priorities," Barnett said. "Families are making tough choices just as state government is, and government ought to be thinking about priorities and how what they do affects the state's future."
Barnett said during difficult financial times it is important that states plan for the future so they don't lose ground, even if they don't have the dollars they need to expand.
"You can develop the infrastructure that you need to support the program, work on professional development, encourage school districts to use some of their Title I funds for early childhood programs and that kind of thing," he said.
Barnett said the federal government is signaling that states should focus on providing innovative ways to expand pre-school education to more children.
The recent stimulus package gave Arne Duncan, the U.S. secretary of education, about $5 billion in discretionary funds to support innovative approaches to raising student achievement including pre-school initiatives.
But Barnett said there is a caveat -- states have to use their stimulus funding for more than plugging holes in their education budgets.
"He's going to take that into account when it comes to handing out money from that discretionary fund and I think that sends a very strong message about the value the administration sees in early childhood education," Barnett said.
Jan Hume, executive director of the Alabama School Readiness Alliance, said having access to a high-quality pre-school education is important to Alabama parents and educators alike. But providing more access is a real challenge for the state because of money and the need to have something as basic as enough qualified teachers to meet the demand that an expanded program would create.
"The way I've organized our work is to put it into two categories: public awareness and advocacy and building capacity," Hume said. "These are the areas that we're going to need to focus on as the program grows."
Hume said having enough teachers with the right early childhood education credentials will be key to the expansion of the state's program.
Part of meeting national standards for high-quality pre-K means having teachers who have degrees in child development or early childhood education.
With a governor's race looming in 2010, what the direction the state's program will take under a new administration will make planning for the future a challenge.